Vivian Cheruiyot

A Veteran Olympian at 28, the World Champion Looks Forward

London 2012 didn't really go to plan for the Kenyan athletics squad. David Rudisha's wonderfully smooth world record run in the 800m may have been one of the most spectacular moments of the Games but in the distance events, the disciplines they've virtually made their own over the past decade, they were convincingly outperformed.

Britain's Mo Farah comfortably saw off his African rivals in the 5000m and 10,000m, Kenya's much vaunted marathon runners were pipped to the gold by the little known Ugandan Stephen Kiprotich and most disappointingly, double World Champion Vivian Cheruiyot was outshone by the Ethiopians in the women's long distance events.

Twelve months ago, the diminutive Cheruiyot was leaving the world trailing in her wake as she stormed to two golds in Daegu but in London she came up against two runners in Meseret Defar and Tirunesh Dibaba who will go down among the greatest of all time. Defar won her first gold in Athens back in 2004 and Dibaba is now a three-time Olympic gold medallist.

However if Cheruiyot is disappointed, she's doing a good job of hiding it. We speak a few days after she was outsprinted by Defar in the 5000m and she seems mainly relieved to finally possess an Olympic medal (she won silver behind Defar and bronze behind Dibaba in the 10,000m)."At the Olympics there is more pressure (than the World Championships) as they are only every four years so if you miss that year you have to wait and you never know if you will be still good after another four years. It's a very good thing to get a medal," she explains.

Like many other champions and medallists in London (Jessica Ennis and Carmelita Jeter first spring to mind), Cheruiyot's relief stems from past Olympic heartbreak. A medal contender going into Beijing four years ago, Cheruiyot fell ill and was far from her best as she finished fifth.

"Yes, the London Olympics have been much more significant because at the 2000 Olympics I was still very young and in 2008 I was sick but thankfully this year I was ok. It has been so nice for me (to make the podium at the Olympics) because they were the only important medals that I was missing, having won the World Championships in the past." she says.